Film Review - Undertone
Images courtesy of A24.
Viewer beware: you’re in for a scare generic A24 horror flick.
Undertone is the feature debut from director Ian Tuason, following paranormal podcaster Evy (Nina Kiri) who tries to record an episode with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco) while caring for her terminally ill mother. As her worries around her mother and her boyfriend grow, she listens to a series of audio files sent in by an anonymous listener and disturbing coincidences begin to occur, creating questions the two struggle to answer.
Undertone wears its inspirations proudly on its sleeves, bearing resemblance to films like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Longlegs (2024) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), alongside internet mythos Creepypastas. Only two characters are ever actually present onscreen, Evy and her ‘Momma’ (Michèle Duquet), leaving you to rely on sound alone to imagine her online partner and what happens in the audio clips. Tuason’s visual style incorporates a heavy use of negative space, leaving you to wonder what could be hiding in the darkness behind Evy at any given point in time, or as the camera pans around the room.
However.
This is all you will be watching for essentially the entire film: the camera panning around Evy’s room while she sits at her MacBook and listens to scary sounds at night, before cutting to the dark hallway behind her. Originally intended to be a radio play, it’s clear that the cinematography of this film was not given the same attention as the script. The lack of visual variety between shots means that any fear and tension created by the sound design is defused quickly due to their overuse. Also, the hand Evy uses to write notes with changes between shots, a particularly distracting example of poor continuity.
The sound design in question is lacking for a film that is entirely reliant on it to convey its story, as well as being the focus of its marketing. Poor ADR and strange equalisation choices mean that while it’s good for setting up a cheap loud jumpscare, it becomes boring and repetitive hearing it for an hour and a half straight. What it does do well is blending the sounds coming from the audio clips and from Evy’s house together.
The plot in the film is paced awkwardly, flipping between Evy recording her podcast, and lamenting over her problems with stilted Wiseau-esque dialogue. The film painstakingly goes through all ten audio clips - exposition that could have been condensed into half of the time it actually takes. The actual narrative (no spoilers) also suffers from the well-observed A24 “trying to make Hereditary (2018) again” syndrome, with themes of maternal grief and children meeting with grisly fates.
For all its flaws, no other film has replicated the terror of seeing something move in the corner of your eye while you wear noise-cancelling headphones.
4 haunted statues out of 10.
You can find Jasper on Letterboxd and Instagram.
Undertone is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.